LONDON | May 2, 2018 – Drake Star Partners has announced it won the “Transaction of the year (over £50mm - £75mm)” award and the “Energy Deal of the year” award during M&A Advisor’s 2^nd EMEA Corporate Growth Summit, held in London. These award wins are the latest in a series of international industry recognitions acknowledging Drake Star Partners as a front runner in tech M&A, both from a thought-leadership and cross-border deal-making standpoint.

The firm earned these top honors for its role as exclusive investment banking advisor in the majority acquisition and equity growth funding of Acrolinx by Genui Partners (“Transaction of the year – over £50mm - £75mm”) and in the acquisition of NewMotion by Shell (“Energy deal of the year”).

Ralf Philipp Hofmann, Managing Partner and Member of the firm’s Global Executive Committee was at the M&A Advisor’s awards ceremony to accept the Transaction of the year award, having led the Acrolinx transaction. He commented: “We are honored to receive this recognition, especially coming from such an industry staple like the M&A Advisor and its judging panel. Acrolinx is the only AI software platform that uses a unique linguistic engine to read content and provide immediate guidance and powerful analytics to make it more effective. We are thrilled to have supported an innovative growth tech company like Acrolinx in achieving its goals, and to have M&A Advisor not only acknowledge the quality of our work as dealmakers but also recognize the trend-setting nature of this transaction involving the use of AI in enterprise content creation.”

Since leading the NewMotion transaction for Drake Star Partners, Frank Verbeek, Managing Partner was also in London to accept the Energy Deal of the year award. He commented: “We are humbled to receive yet another award for this landmark, cross-border deal. M&A Advisor’s recognition of this transaction as the energy deal of the year is further proof that the future of mobility is truly electric and that oil & gas companies like Shell are currently on the lookout for such innovative solutions to accelerate their transition towards low-carbon transport. We see strong cross-border activity within this sector, with many more EV companies eyeing such growth opportunities and believe that Drake Star Partners is ideally positioned to support more companies operating in the EV space, along with their growth objectives.”

From left to right: Benedikt Gottwald (Associate, Munich); Ralf Philipp Hofmann (Managing Partner and Member of the Executive Committee, Munich); Sherief Rahim (Senior Associate, Amsterdam); Frank Verbeek (Managing Partner, Amsterdam) – Drake Star Partners 

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